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NEI Research News

Thanks to the work of NEI scientists and grantees, we’re constantly learning new information about the causes and treatment of vision disorders. Get the latest updates about their work — along with other news about NEI.

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Blind People Can’t See Color but Understand It the Same Way as Sighted People

Questioning the belief that that people born blind could never truly understand color, a team of cognitive neuroscientists demonstrated that congenitally blind and sighted individuals actually understand it quite similarly.
Scientist looking in a microscope

Retina ‘hardwired’ to predict path of moving objects

Neural circuits in the primate retina can generate the information needed to predict the path of a moving object before visual signals even leave the eye, UW Medicine researchers demonstrate in a new paper.
Two hat-shaped objects, one pointing towards the viewer (concave) and one away from the viewer (convex)

Scientists uncover how decisions about what we see are relayed back through the brain

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have discovered that decisions based on visual information is broadcast widely to neurons in the visual system, including to those that are not being used to make the decision.

Brain’s ‘memory center’ needed to recognize image sequences but not single sights

A new MIT study of how a mammalian brain remembers what it sees shows that while individual images are stored in the visual cortex, the ability to recognize a sequence of sights critically depends on guidance from the hippocampus.
neurons

How neurons get past "no"

When looking at a complex landscape, the eye needs to focus in on important details without losing the big picture. Now, a new study by Salk scientists shows how inhibitory neurons play a critical role in this process.z
Brain illustration with recycling logo

NIH-funded study shows children recycle brain regions when acquiring new skills

Scientists studied the brain activity of school-aged children during development and found that regions that activated upon seeing limbs (hands, legs, etc.) subsequently activated upon seeing faces or words when the children grew older.
Box of tissues

What makes us sneeze?

A team led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has identified, in mice, specific cells and proteins that control the sneeze reflex.

As novel sights become familiar, different brain rhythms, neurons take over

A new study by researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory substantially advances understanding of how a mammalian brain enables “visual recognition memory.”
Image of brain cells with "sparks" of red and yellow

Brain tumors caused by normal neuron activity in mice predisposed to such tumors

A study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Stanford University School of Medicine shows that the normal day-to-day activity of neurons can drive the formation and growth of brain tumors.
city street at night as seen by a person with normal vision

A new theory for what’s happening in the brain when something looks familiar

University of Pennsylvania researchers propose a new theory for how the brain understands the level of activation expected from a sensory input and corrects for it, leaving behind the signal for familiarity.

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